|
August 2, 2013
Captain Samuel White Sweet settled in Adelaide in 1866 and spent the next twenty years photographing the most important period of South Australia’s development. He ran his photography business in South Australia between 1866 and 1886, under the professional name of ‘Captain Sweet, Landscape Photographer’.
He photographed the growth of the city from its infancy to economic, cultural and industrial maturity; witnessing the construction of some of Adelaide’s most important buildings and the establishment of its first major transport and communication systems.
Captain Sweet, Bank of Adelaide between 1869 and 1889, gelatin silver, Part of Captain Sweet's views of South Australia
Sweet became a master of the photographic methods of the time – wet plate glass negatives and albumen silver photographic prints – and was the first to use dry plate negatives in South Australia.
Most mid-19th century photographers kept to studio portraiture and only a few, like Bernard Goode, George Freeman, Captain Sweet and Townsend Duryea, took landscape photographs and views of Adelaide's buildings and city streets. Captain Sweet remained the foremost landscape photographer in South Australia until his death in 1886.
|
